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Monday, April 18, 2011

The 50:50 Joint Venture between BYD and Daimler Mercedes-Benz (called the Shenzhen BYD Daimler New Technology Company Limited), announced at its first board meeting since receiving its business license from the Market Supervision Administration of Shenzhen (MSAS) that Mr. Ulrich Walker CEO of Daimler Northeast Asia Investment Co. Ltd, would be the Chairman of the Board of BYD-Daimler and that Mr. Yubo Lian Senior Vice President of BYD Co., Ltd and Chief Engineer of BYD’s auto business would be President and CEO.

The Joint Venture has made significant progress since cooperation began over a year ago – the design of the first BYD-Daimler electric vehicle (EV) model has been finalized and prototyping has been kicked off – a major milestone. Both parties will work on EV production preparations and team members from design, engineering, procurement, and quality management have all relocated to the BYD Shenzhen Headquarters.

From the outset of the collaboration, BYD and Daimler put special emphasis on high quality standards for design of the vehicle. The whole process of new vehicle design has been closely supervised by Mercedes-Benz Quality Management experts. This process has included creating a new international supply chain and the selection of the right combination of mold-makers and high-quality component suppliers. Cooperation with the World‘s leading suppliers plays an important role in safeguarding the new vehicle’s superior quality. The electric vehicle co-developed by the joint venture will capitalize on Daimler’s know-how in highly-reliable and safe electric vehicle architectures as well as combining BYD’s leading-edge, environmentally-friendly, Iron-Phosphate battery technology and electric drive systems. The vehicle will be marketed under the new brand jointly created and owned by Daimler and BYD.